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Estonia’s trade flows can now be visualized

News
Posted on 5 June 2019, 11:00
Statistics Estonia launched an application that visualizes Estonia’s trade flows, giving a better overview of trade with other countries.

“A picture says more than a thousand words – that is the reason for why we started creating a tool for visualizing foreign trade statistics,” explained Karl Annus, project manager for digital services. “The volume of foreign trade transactions in Estonia sometimes reaches billions of euros and most of us have a difficult time picturing this. The application visualizes the trade flows on the screen and helps us better perceive the share and value of the goods in the trade of Estonia, selected countries or within the particular group of goods,” Annus added. Exports and imports can also be displayed on maps.

The application includes information on the main partner countries of Estonia’s exports and imports and the main commodities imported and exported. It is possible to download both graphic representations as well as the relevant data. The data can be visualized by year, quarter and month and by countries of origin, consignment and destination.

Try the application HERE.

Photo: Screenshot

Commodities are visualized using the Combined Nomenclature (CN). The Combined Nomenclature is the goods classification used within the European Union for the purposes of foreign trade statistics and customs duties. It is a further development of the World Customs Organization’s Harmonized System (HS) nomenclature.

The data for visualizations are obtained from Statistics Estonia’s public statistical database .Stat tables VK10_1, VK10_2 and VK10_3. The data are updated every month after the release of foreign trade data in the database. See the release times in the release calendar.

For the statistical activity “Foreign trade”, the main representative of public interest is the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, commissioned by whom Statistics Estonia collects and analyses the data necessary for conducting the statistical activity.

Statistics Estonia is a government agency. Its main task is to provide objective information on the economic, demographic, social and environmental situation and trends in Estonia. The goal of Statistics Estonia is to become by 2022 the most effective and innovative producer of reliable and user-friendly statistics in Europe.